Thursday, May 12, 2011

UFC's awesomeness

In the world of sports this week, the UFC had the best week BY FAR! Here's why............

-The UFC is fixing itself in a BIG way! At UFC's annual Fighters Summit, Dana White announced that the UFC has added Accident Insurance for all fighters in UFC and Strikeforce. HUGE! The insurance covers roughly 300 fighters. "Zuffa pays 100% premiums for the policy. There are no monthly fees incurred by the fighter for participating in the plan", White explained. Now it used to be that fighters were only covered during fight night injuries suffered in the cage. Which doesn't make any sense. Gotta give Dana White and the Zuffa Brothers big props on this one. There are a ridiculous amount of injuries leading up to fights as training is a grueling, dangerous process. This is for everyone but I love it for the fighter just trying to make it. Not everyone is Brock Lesnar. Not everyone has endorsement deals paying hundreds of thousands. A lot of Zuffa Inc. fighters have a primary job to make ends meat. To put food on their families table while they pursue their dreams.This is just a wonderful thing for the continued development and evolution of a thoroughly entertaining sport! 

-In addition to that, the UFC is showing the rest of the sports world how to properly handle social media. At the UFC Fighters Summit, they set up a system to REWARD their athletes for their Twitter accounts, followers, and tweets!!! Starting in June, UFC and Strikeforce fighters will be split up into four groups, based on their amount of twitter followers. This will be done to ensure fairness. Then on a quarterly basis, three fighters from each group (12 in total) will be handed a $5000 bonus based on the fighter who has gained the most followers in the quarter, the fighter who gained the highest percentage of new followers, and the fighter who produced the most creative tweets. So they want to reward their athletes for developing as big a following as they can and for helping to develop the UFC brand? Brilliant! While other sports organizations are scared of an athletes/owners use of Twitter (See Mendenhall, Ochocinco, TO and the NFL, or even Gilbert Arenas, Mark Cuban, and the NBA), the UFC is encouraging it because they realize what it can do. Sure sometimes athletes may look like idiots. This will happen. Whats up Mendenhall, I'm talking to you. Hell, from time to time, we all look like idiots. But social media breaks down barriers between athletes and fans. It gives the athlete the opportunity to market themself to the fans however they want. Just gotta think outside the box. Dana White gets it. He just gets it. He sees possibility when the old guard of the other sports just see problems. Another instance of White using his marketing acumen and foresight to promote the UFC brand to anyone and everyone. Keep gettin it White! If you're gonna be something, you might as well be an asshole who happens to be a marketing genius! 

Im Jus Sayin


No comments:

Post a Comment